‘My God,’ she said, her voice low, holding her arms together at her chest. ‘What do we do now? Try to walk back to Central Park?’
He looked back out the window and down at the street. Nothing. Some papers fluttered by. He looked to Sandy and said, ‘It’d be a long walk. More than fifty blocks. And it’ll be getting dark soon, within a few hours. I’d hate to see you and me trying to hoof it tonight. Especially if we ran into a pack of dogs. Or our friend the sniper.’
She shivered, rubbed at her arms, eyes filling up. ‘Carl... Jesus, this is just like the dream I had, the one I told you about. Abandoned in Manhattan, alone at night, hearing the wild dogs get closer . . .’
‘Then stop dreaming,’ he said, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘Just like your grandmama in South Africa, you’re not alone. And I’m not going to let anything else happen to you. We’ve got a couple of options.’
‘Such as?’
‘Option one.’ He held up the radio. ‘We call for help and tell them that we’re someplace else. We watch that someplace else, see who turns up. If it looks like regular Army, then we can run out on the street and make a fuss. Maybe that ambush was a one-time deal.’
‘And if it doesn’t look okay?’
‘Then we go to option two.’
She rubbed at her eyes again, and a hint of a smile appeared on her lips. ‘Typical American. Always full of plans and ideas. Go ahead. Give it a go. Where are you going to send them?’
He motioned out the window. ‘There’s a bar and grill down the street. I’m going to send them there.’
She nodded in agreement and Carl switched on the radio. Traffic Control, Traffic Control,’ he said. ‘Please come in, traffic Control.’
The reply was instant. ‘This is Traffic Control to unknown radio traffic. Who’s calling, kay?’
‘Traffic Control, this is the Times contingent, assigned to Lieutenant Loomis.’ He looked over to Sandy. ‘There’s been an accident. Lieutenant Loomis is dead. Over.’
The voice sounded skeptical. ‘Say again, Times, kay.’
‘I said, Lieutenant Loomis is dead. We’re holed up in a bar and grill in Greenwich Village. We need help.’
‘Your address, kay.’
He looked out the window, double-checked against the map in his other hand, and said, ‘We’re on the first floor of the Open Road Bar, corner of Seventh Avenue and Perry Street. Repeating, we’re on the first floor of the Open Road Bar, corner of Seventh Avenue and Perry Street. Over.’
‘Understood, Times. Help is on the way. Traffic Control out.’
He switched off the radio and looked at Sandy. ‘And now we see what happens.’
~ * ~
Carl emptied one of the two satchels into his knapsack and fastened the blankets to the pack. He pulled out his holstered Colt .45, unbuckled his belt, and slipped the holster onto it. Sandy stared at him, and then the weapon.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘From my years of service to this country, that’s where. Hold on, will you?’
He stood behind the drapes, near the open window, holding a pair of small binoculars. Sandy stood with him. ‘How much longer?’
They heard the sound of an engine. A couple of engines. ‘Not long at all, I think.’ The binoculars gave him a good view of the bar’s entrance. In a very few seconds, he felt quite sick to his stomach.
A squad of armed soldiers tumbled out of two Jeeps, in plain fatigues with no insignia, billed fatigue caps, and black ski masks over their heads, automatic rifles in their hands. They moved whip-fast, into position, using hand signals to communicate to each other. They hunkered down as one of their number nudged open the door and tossed something into the first floor of the building. A hollow boom! echoed up the street, and broken glass spewed out from the bar.
Sandy said something he couldn’t make out. He continued to stare at the scene up the street, at the cool professionalism of the soldiers as they went about their task. Damn it, they were good, they were quite good.
Carl heard the soldiers yell as they poured into the building, and then the rapid fire of gunshots, the flat sounds of the explosions causing pigeons on the sidewalk below to fly off in terror. He lowered the binoculars, turned his head. Sandy was trembling at his side, tears streaming down her cheeks, hand held tight against her mouth.
He stroked her cheek, just for a moment. ‘Time for option two.’
They were out of the apartment in less than a minute, leaving the radio behind them on the floor, switched off. She motioned to take it and he said, ‘No. They might be able to triangulate the signal if we use it again, figure out where we are.’
‘But—’
‘If they do that, we’re dead. Let’s go.’
~ * ~
Two hours later they had moved three blocks to Barrow Street. His head ached and Sandy’s face was gray with fear and exhaustion. It had been slow going, traveling from one building to another, scurrying across alleyways, over rooftops, and through tiny enclosed backyards. He would pause occasionally, raising his hand and then holding his fingers to his lips. Twice he heard the sounds of engines, as Jeeps crisscrossed the open streets around Greenwich Village. He tried to keep to the streets that were blocked with traffic, to give themselves an edge, however slight, over the men that were patrolling in Jeeps.
Along the way they lost their dosimetry, and secretly, he was glad. Pausing to check on the dosimeters wasted a lot of time, and getting a slight dose of radiation was the least of their problems. At one wide alleyway they froze at the sound of barking. A pack of five or six dogs, ribs showing, fur mangy and tangled, slowly advanced on them, growling.
He thought of the pistol and the noise it would make, and picked up a scrap piece of lumber instead. He threw it at the pack and one or two of the dogs flinched, but they didn’t stop. They came closer, teeth bared. Carl pushed Sandy through an open door and closed it, just as the dogs lunged. They were in a dark stairwell. More barking and claws scrabbling at the closed door. Sandy sobbed. ‘It’s okay, Sandy. Let’s find a place for the night.’
They walked up the stairs by the light of the flashlight, staying close to the wall. He ignored the two apartments on the first floor. Too easy for animals to get in. After breaking in each door with a well-aimed kick, he found that the windows in both apartments on the second floor were broken. On the third floor, he found one that looked all right. He switched off the flashlight and Sandy joined him in the living room. She rubbed her arms and said, ‘What now?’
‘We hunker down for a few minutes and eat. And then we decide what to do next.’
‘Carl—’
‘Sandy, the sun will be setting in a few minutes. I want to make sure this place is okay before the daylight is gone.’
She just nodded and turned and he knew he had been short with her, but he couldn’t help it. All of his training, experiences, and old memories were coming back, demanding attention. In his four years of civilian life, he thought he had built up a barrier, an insulation against what it had been like to be out on the line with a weapon at his side, but that barrier had been washed away like a dike made of sugar during a flood.
The living room was reasonably sized, with a couch, three chairs, and a window seat that looked out onto the street. He went to the rear of the apartment, to the kitchen. The floor was dirty and the counter was covered with dust and tiny animal tracks and droppings. He didn’t bother with the bathroom, but nudged open another door, to a bedroom. The bed had collapsed and in briefly shining his flashlight over the mattress and blankets, he saw where rats had made their nests. He shivered and made sure the door was closed. Another door—probably to another bedroom—was wedged shut and he decided not to force it open.
He went back through the kitchen, closing the door behind him, to the living room. It was getting darker. Except for the satchel he had given Sandy, their gear was in the center of the floor, on an old braided rug. The door to the stairway was open.
There was
no Sandy.
‘Sandy?’ he said. And again, louder: ‘Sandy?’
The Colt .45 was in one hand and the flashlight was in his other, and he went to the open doorway and almost bumped into her as she came back up the stairs.
‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, her voice a tad too cheerful, like she was trying to force herself to see this as one large adventure. ‘I checked a couple of the other apartments and found these.’ She held up a handful of candles, her purse over her shoulder.
He wanted to grab her arms and ask her why in hell she had left the apartment without telling him. He wanted to ask her what would have happened if she had fallen through a weakened floor. Or if rats or another dog pack had gone after her. Or if she had run into a squatter or a looter or one of the armed men out there who were trying so hard to kill them.
Instead he took a deep breath and said, ‘Thanks, Sandy. We’ll need them.’
~ * ~
Using a small hammer and some nails that they found in a tiny tool kit in the kitchen, he hung a blanket over the window, and then lit a couple of the candles. He spent a scary moment, standing alone on the dark street, checking the window to make sure no telltale glow could be seen from outside. They sat cross-legged on the floor, the candlelight flickering on the walls. Now that they weren’t moving around, he began to notice little things about their shelter. The built-in bookcases. The family photographs on the wall. A music stand in the corner and a violin case. The little pile of mail on a table at the side of the front door. Sandy handled the mail briefly, poking at a couple of bills and a Time magazine from October 1962. On the torn cover was a painting of a man, the headmaster of Phillips Andover.
‘Look at that,’ Sandy said. ‘A week before a nuclear war, and on the cover of the largest news magazine is a story about prep schools. What were they thinking of?’
‘They weren’t,’ he said.
She touched the mail again. ‘We have to talk, Carl. I need to know what happened, why we were ambushed. Could Greg have been the target?’
His head still ached and there were a lot of things he wanted to do, like recheck the apartment and inventory their supplies, but he saw that look in her face, the face of a reporter who needed to know something, right away.
‘No, I don’t think they were after Greg. Which makes us the probable targets. And Sandy, I apologize, because I think it was my fault.’
‘What do you mean? Apologize for what?’
He got down on the floor, started opening his knapsack. ‘Apologizing for being an idiot. Last night. . . well, among the other delightful things you and I did last night, we had a conversation, about secrets and Potemkin villages and special forces from my country and your country being here in Manhattan. Less than a day later, we’re almost killed. Twice, if you count that raid on that bar. Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
She clasped her hands before her, like she was afraid they would start shaking. ‘Our rooms . . . they were bugged, weren’t they?’
He opened up her satchel. ‘Yes. I was too stupid to think of that. It makes perfect sense, so our hosts would know what all the reporters were talking about in the privacy of their rooms. We should have passed each other notes but instead, I ran off at the mouth. And someone heard us, someone with secrets that they wanted kept.’
‘Secrets worth killing for,’ she said, her voice just above a whisper. ‘Carl, what do we—’
He laid out a blanket on the floor. ‘What we do now is eat. We’ve got to keep our strength up, because we’ve got a long night and a longer day ahead of us.’
‘Carl, but what about—’
‘Sandy,’ he said, feeling again that he was slipping back into his Sergeant Landry mode. ‘We can talk later about anything you want and what happened back at the ambush scene, but right now, we’re going to eat. So please sit down, all right?’
Her eyes downcast, she did just that.
~ * ~
After they finished eating—roast beef and cheese sandwiches from the Army box lunches—it was now dark outside, and he could feel the apartment get cooler. There were rustling noises coming from the walls, and while he tried to ignore them, Sandy couldn’t. They had taken cushions off the couches and were sitting up against a coffee table, and she turned to him and said, ‘Rats?’
He nodded. ‘Rats. I checked the walls in this room and I didn’t see any holes or openings. I’m sure we’ll be all right.’
‘Brrr,’ she said, burrowing closer to him. ‘Vicious little creatures. Do you remember the rat scene towards the end of 1984, when poor Winston Smith is being tortured? The wire cage pressed against his face with the rat on the other end? Still gives me nightmares.’ She turned and brushed some hair away from her face and said, ‘It’s time for another talk, Carl. What kind of secrets are worth killing the two of us for?’
He took a deep breath, reached out and held her hand. ‘I don’t know. All I do know is that someone probably found out we weren’t content playing our roles in this little press tour charade. And that someone decided to do something about it. The bigger the secret, the bigger the response. What happened to us and Greg means this secret has got to be huge.’
‘Carl, your own Army, doing this—’
‘No, I don’t think it was regular Army,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t regular Army back there, not by a long shot. Look out there, at the walls.’
He saw her head move. ‘See the shadows? See the darkness? That’s where things happen in this country. My guess would be rogue Special Forces units or intelligence agencies. People working for the powers that be. And the powers that be must have something planned for Manhattan, something involving our Special Forces and your paratroopers. Something more than just turning on the lights and inaugurating Rockefeller next January.’
‘What could those plans be?’
‘I have no idea, and right now, I’ve got more important things to worry about.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like getting a good night’s sleep. And getting us out of Manhattan.’
She sat up. ‘Are you joking? We’re on an island, and the Army controls the bridges and the tunnels. How do you expect us to get off it?’
‘Remember the briefing yesterday, about looters still at work on the island?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He squeezed her hand again. ‘If the looters are still busy looting buildings, then they have to get off the island somehow.’
‘And how do you intend to contact these looters?’
‘Just wait and see.’
~ * ~
Although it was risky, he saw no other way of doing it, but he made sure he had his flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other as they went out the back of the building to a small yard that was choked over with trees, shrubbery, and grass. With no running water and no water to spare, Carl dug small holes in the yard with a piece of wood which they both used as outdoor latrines. Again, the old Army training: don’t leave evidence out in the bush that you’ve been around. It was clumsy and awkward, but when they were finished, Sandy stood next to him and said, ‘Switch off the torch for a moment, will you?’
He did and she said, ‘All right. Now, look up.’
The stars above were bright and hard, brighter, he was sure, than they had ever been before, except when this land had been occupied by Indians. Around them and in the distance, the dark shapes of the buildings blotted out parts of the sky. She leaned in against him. ‘If you can ignore the fact of how terrible this place is, it’s a beautiful sight. Where else can you stand in a city built for millions, and see the stars as bright as if you were in the wilderness?’
Then there was the sound of a motor, far off into the distance. He looked up and saw a cone of moving light that began swiveling back and forth. The air seemed colder. ‘Time to go back in.’
‘What’s the light?’
‘Helicopter with a searchlight. Looks like we’re still being hunted.’
~ * ~
Back in the third-floor apartment, he closed the door behind them, blocked it shut with a bureau, and then made another sweep of the apartment, making sure nothing four-legged or furry had moved in since their bathroom break. He sat down on the cushions on the floor and pulled blankets over their legs. One of the candles was still burning.
‘We should take turns sleeping tonight, just so ...well, just so one of us can keep an eye on things,’ Carl said.
‘That sounds fine, but look at these first, will you.’ Sandy was going through a musty pile of magazines and newspapers. She had pulled a few New York Timeses out of the mess. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Some historical artifacts to look at.’
Resurrection Day Page 29